


The Group Mind Has Decided You're In Love (and you are)

by el_vip



Category: Trolls (Movies 2016 2020)
Genre: F/F, Human AU, Multi, mentions of drinking and drugs, more characters to be added as I go lol, musician au, nothing particularly explicit about it though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27805399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_vip/pseuds/el_vip
Summary: Human AU where the trolls are all part of the same record-producing conglomerate, set post the events that parallel World Tour.yes I stole the title from a crazy ex-girlfriend song.
Relationships: Queen Barb/Queen Poppy (Trolls)
Kudos: 17





	The Group Mind Has Decided You're In Love (and you are)

**Author's Note:**

> a couple of things!  
> 1) i'm not particularly knowledgeable about the actual reality of working with record producing so a lot of it is fictionalised and also very vague lol  
> 2) any non-canon characters you see in here are OCs borrowed from the lovely trolls server i'm in  
> 3) i haven't watched trollstopia yet (or the beat goes on oops) so any characters from those are going to be very much missing

Barb groans and tries to burrow her head further down into the soft thing it’s making a dent in. There’s a violently disruptive noise blaring at the edges of her consciousness that she’s trying to avoid having to pay any attention to. 

It takes another minute or two of her dozing, and her body rolling onto its side, before she realises what the noise is and she jerks upright. 

Shit. That's her alarm. 

Her arm flings out to one side automatically, hand slapping uselessly against the wooden surface of her bedside drawers a few times until she manages to aim right and hit the snooze on the whiny little machine. 

She groans again and her body drops back down into the sheets. For a little while, anyway. Until she has to peel herself up again, slipping one leg out from under the sheets and cursing under her breath at the distinct lack of comfort the outside world is providing when compared to the duvet she’s been buried under for the last few hours. 

She flexes her toes into the carpet when they reach it and the solidity of a real surface beneath her feet wakes her a little. 

Not that that stops her from almost dozing off again as she's brushing her teeth. 

\--

She's downstairs in her pyjamas - red boxer shorts and a black tank top, because Barb's never got the point of buying actual pyjama sets - before she's even actually awake. Her body’s on total autopilot, tearing off the tab of a pouch of cat food with her teeth before she even registers what it is she’s opening. She spits it out onto the counter immediately, pulls a face and makes a noise of abject disgust. 

She still has her face scrunched up in response when the soft thunk of the food hitting a plastic bowl wakes Debbie from her spot in the other room and has her padding into the kitchen, to sit and tiss aggressively until Barb sets the bowl down. 

Barb’s staring down at the objectively hideous cat for a few minutes, thinking actively of absolutely nothing, before she registers that time is still moving forward. Then she’s turning her head to look over at the stairs again. 

“Dad!” She plucks a couple of slices from the bread bin as she yells, and then yells again as she slots them into the toaster. 

“ _ Dad! _ ” There’s another pause on her end as she pushes the pedal on the appliance and when there’s still no audible response, she grumbles and heads back over to stand at the bottom of the stairs, a hand curled around the bannister railing. “Daddy, you gotta get up.”

Still nothing. Of course. Barb’s sigh is louder this time, though not half as loud as her footsteps on each stair as she heads up. She’s never been particularly light-footed. She knocks on her dad’s door twice for courtesy’s sake but opens it without hearing anything from him inside. He’s still sleeping - or at least doing his best to make it seem like he is. 

Barb folds her arms and settles her back against the doorframe. “Da-ad.” She elongates the syllable as far as she can stretch it. 

“You gotta eat something - ” and there it is. Trust her dad to only get up at the promise of food. He’s up out of bed and shuffling past her towards the stairlift before Barb even has the chance to react. It takes her a few moments of watching him retreat fondly, and then she’s padding down the stairs again herself, a few steps behind him. 

She angles him towards the bathroom first, before she lets him get anywhere near the kitchen and after an amicable hum under his breath, he closes the door behind him. 

Barb’s in the chair closest to the kitchen door, where she can see the bathroom from, just in case. Her phone is in her hands as she taps through it absently, not really paying attention to anything on the screen. Well, except for the occasional glimpse of her own bright red hair she catches. 

She’s not big on technology, to be perfectly honest. She knows it has its uses and the way they use it for promoting stuff at work is pretty killer. It’s not as if she’s inept at it - for the most part - and she doesn’t have the fear of technology progressing past her ability to handle it that a lot of people tend to have when they don’t like it. Barb’s just found that it’s… Kind of not for her. 

She’s still ignoring the screen of her phone when the sound of it ringing calls her out of her reverie. Barb squints at the multicoloured buttons on the lower half and then groans, before she pushes her thumb over the green circle. Her head tips back over the chair, neck straining. "What?" 

"Barbara, honey," a Southern twang makes itself known in the voice of the caller and the very moment the first syllable is out of the woman’s mouth, Barb knows who it is. The PR folk from Delta’s side of things are all pretty stubborn and unwieldy, but Barb being Barb has definitely made most of them skittish, so any calls for her are fielded through Delta herself. She fights the urge to let her eyes roll so far back in her skull she can see her brain. 

“Tell me why I just got another disgruntled journalist emailin’ me about a young lady with a red mohawk and half an ear missin’ tellin’ him to… Quote, unquote ‘go fuck himself’ midway through an interview?’ 

“If he didn’t work out my name, then he’s a pretty shitty journalist.” Her response is coupled with an irritated scoffing sound and the adjustment of her phone, to tuck it between her ear and her shoulder as she smears some extremely processed, vaguely chocolatey substance over the toast she’s reached over to pluck from the toaster. 

There’s a heavy pause on the other end, in which Barb briefly questions all the life choices that have led her to swear down the phone at a woman who could probably crush her skull with no effort. 

“Be that as it  _ may _ ,” an eyebrow jumps up, as Barb notes that she didn’t exactly disagree with her there. Definitely a shitty journalist. “Not gettin’ called, again, quote, unquote ‘a big bag of dicks’ is kinda key in makin’ sure he don’t run a piece not in your best interests.” 

Alright. Barb can at least admit that that’s probably true. “So? It’s not like a billion other people haven’t run smear campaigns about me before.” Her dad comes to sit down at the table opposite her and she slides the plate in front of her over to him. Half a grin settles on her face as she watches his particular brand of enthusiasm kick in over toast, of all things. 

The voice on the other end of the line makes sure that expression drops pretty quickly. “Well, that’s part of the problem, sugar. You’re still pretty early in your career and I know you’re doin’ real well for yourself, but you never know if that’s gonna change all of a sudden. I know he asked a couple personal questions, but you’re real elusive, Barbara. ‘Course he did.”

It’s Barb’s turn to be silent now, for a few moments. Maybe that’s why she’s never felt the need for technology either. She’s never felt the need to broadcast her personal life to thousands of strangers. Especially now that they have a reason to want to know about it. 

“I’ll apologise,” she mutters through tightly gritted teeth. It’s the best she can even think about offering. The guy should think himself lucky she’s even willing to talk to him again after the disaster of an interview he led her through. Tried leading her through. “I’ll call and apologise. For losing my temper. But that’s it. He was bein’ a dick and he knows it. And you know it too, even if you’re not allowed to say it. And I’m not doing another interview to make it up. I’ll tell him to fuck right off again if he asks.” 

Yet again there’s a pause from the woman on the other end of the line before she clicks her tongue into the receiver and concedes. She’s done this enough times to know that Barb is way too stubborn to go anywhere with it.

“Fine. We’ll strike him off the list of the only four people you’ve ever given a full, polite interview to. Three now, actually. … Have a good day.” There’s another click, this time more robotic, of the phone being hung up. 

Barb holds back the urge to call back and get the last word in. It’s only partially her fault that she wants to keep her private life private and that she has a habit of snapping at reporters who ask the wrong questions. The guy kept prodding about her ear - which Delta should have figured was up, if he mentioned her ear specifically in his email. If and when she wants to talk about that, she’ll talk about that. She’s not going to sit in an interview that’s supposed to be about her career and light anecdotes and then go all in on her personal life.

She grumbles under her breath and brings her phone back around to her face, muttering a few choice curses as she shoves herself up from the table and ducks around it, to start stalking hastily back up the stairs. She’s late for a scheduled jam-slash-sort-of-recording session. 

She throws on the first clothes she manages to get her hands on, jeans that are more hole than fabric, red-and-white skull-patterned t-shirt that she cut the sleeves off of herself - explaining the horribly fraying edges - her staple leather jacket, old and worn after being passed onto her from her dad (and thus slightly oversized) kitted out with as many pins as she could fit onto the lapels as possible. And the helmet, with stencilled and hand-drawn decals, that she shoves onto her head after she’s half-sprinted past her dad with a pause to kiss his temple and out of the door, and swung herself onto her motorcycle. 

The ride is uneventful because it always is, because she’s a surprisingly safe driver. If Barb’s going to go out on her bike, then it’ll be in some ridiculous fiery explosion as a result of her pulling a cool as hell stunt. Not because she gets slammed by some random’s car. 

\--

At least five minutes late is Barb’s usual schtick. Not that it matters. She’s had the same parking spot since she got her first bike and even since they merged the other labels into the company’s conglomerate, there’s yet to be anyone else with the guts to try dropping their own transport in a space that’s obviously hers. 

It doesn’t matter because there are only a few cars already parked up anyway. Riff’s beaten up old Honda is across the car park, as is the godawful colouring of the van that Carol is usually too stoned to be ferrying people around in, even though she does it anyway. 

That makes her the last one in. They’ve probably started without her. She can live with that. It just means that she has all the more right to judge whatever bass riff that Sid’s come up with and whatever rhythm Chord’s come up with that she’ll want to use to support the absurd solo that they can already tell Barb’s planning on. She has a habit of that. At least she appreciates the way they build around her to accommodate it. 

It isn’t like they don’t all get their solos, too. 

She heads into the building with a flourishing swing of the doors, rattling in their hinges from the force she rams her shoulder into them with. It calls attention to her, though the only person in the lobby is someone she vaguely recognises from the floor below hers. Dark skin, bright orange dreadlocks, a stupidly oversized pair of headphones around her neck that Barb questions the actual usefulness of.

Shit. What’s her name again? Barb knows she DJs, that she goes by just one name on stage. Something with an S. She stares blankly at the woman across the lobby from her, until she’s called back to attention by the clearing of her throat. Shit. She’s staring. After another beat she shakes her head as if to wrest herself away from the eye contact that she can practically feel herself leeching awkward vibes into every second that passes.

The other woman - it’s a short name, she knows, she should be able to remember it - raises an eyebrow, but smiles anyway and tips a two-fingered salute in Barb’s direction, before she hauls up her laptop under her arm and continues on her way, wherever she was headed before Barb’s entrance interrupted her. 

That could have gone so much better. 

Truthfully, Barb doesn’t really know the people signed to any of the other labels that have merged into hers. It’s been two months, and she’s met some of them and seen dossiers on various artists, but she’s not spent any time with them. She can’t put any names to any faces, much less any personalities, aside from the handful of other people heading the specific branches of the new merged company. 

They’ve had meetings, every week. There hasn’t been a whole lot of new stuff coming about beyond them all working obscenely hard at the financial and legal aspects of the whole thing, but they’ve needed to settle enough to afford frequent gatherings. There’s not been a whole lot of interpersonal mingling. 

Barb doesn’t hate that, personally. She’s pretty happy to live her life not knowing anyone outside of her own social circle, as small as it is, if not for… 

Jesus. She shakes her head, skimming a hand over the stubbly undercut of her mohawk, fighting down the heat that’s risen to her face. What the hell is she doing standing around in the lobby getting mushy? The receptionist for the building is giving her a strange look over her desk, and she fights back the urge to make a crude gesture back at her, instead opting for squaring her shoulders and stalking towards the stairs. 

Ascending them doesn’t take as long as it should, not with her energy and her legs, long and powerful. Delta made a joke once about her looking like a buff gazelle - or something like that - and Barb thought it was funny enough to half-remember. 

They are on the top floor though. It’s something Barb insisted on, with her particularly powerful stakeholding influence. She’d liked the idea of being above it all and everyone else, and she still likes the idea of anything she throws out of the windows to have a decisively long way to fall before it shatters into pieces. It’s a rock thing.

The thought almost makes her smile as she heads up and turns down the hall and heads towards their recording studio. 

If it were up to her entirely, she thinks she’d bulldoze most of the floor and turn the whole thing into a studio, because it’s not like they all need much else. Even when they’re taking a break, they hang out in the studio anyway and they happen to have their own personal high-end coffee maker that the other inhabitants of the building know not to touch on pain of death. Not that many of them come upstairs to their lair. 

The door opens with more of a swing than it should and the hinges groan, the repetition of Barb throwing them to one side as she strides on through having worn on them. Everyone’s gaze snaps to her when she enters, because they know only she would come in with such aggression, and then they go back to whatever they were doing. 

Sid and Chord are jamming, as she figured they would be, the former plucking out a slow but rhythmic bassline that the latter is happily improvising a few choice riffs over the top of. Speaking of Riff, he’s fidgeting, nervously tightening the head of one of his drums. He always gets nervous when Barb is late, and while she can’t blame him, she feels mostly bad for it. Even if she’s loathe to admit it out loud, she’s been pretty shitty the last few years. To everyone and especially him. She’ll take him out drinking on her tab later. 

The other usual suspects are hanging around too, hovering in various groups around the edges of the room. Ace, concentrating on a sound mix just on the other side of the glass, batting away Carol’s fingers whenever they wander over to her mixing console, Pepper nodding appreciatively over the use of their recorded bass tracks in whatever Ace is actually fiddling with. 

They’re all technically working and Barb supposes she  _ did  _ put a lax deadline on the new album, since they only came off tour a couple of weeks ago. In hindsight she probably should have put them all on a break, herself included, but the offer she put forwards was turned down. She admires that about her band. 

With a crack of her knuckles, she heads across the room, with the stupidly long strides of hers, and pauses at the back wall to peel off the guitar hanging on it with a touch that’s surprisingly delicate for her. No matter how many times she slips it on, she’ll never get tired of the leather strap nestling against her shoulder and the hefty added weight of the guitar tucked against her torso. 

It feels right. It always has. 

Even when she was a kid, on her first smaller-sized acoustic when she’d struggle to keep up with the effortless way her dad’s guitar players would plough through solos like nothing, it still felt natural. She had to learn, of course, but she learned fast, powering through lessons like they were nothing, spending every waking moment she could spare on her own practice. And that practice paid off, because now she gets to shred power chords and play her own riffs on world stages, to sold out audiences. 

It also doesn’t hurt that her own bandmates tend to be a little in awe of her skill too. Her fingers flick over the strings, plucking out a few notes to test out the tuning, and already a head or two is turning towards her. Just in case she calls for attention, just in case she decides they’re going to start jamming something out. 

Barb feels eyes on her, as she gives the tuning keys their appropriately little tweaks, and she grins, absorbing it, living for the attention. 

She won’t satisfy them right now, despite her fingers itching for the use. As much as she’d love to show off right now - only  _ partly  _ to make her feel better for being so awkward downstairs - there are more pressing matters. Part of her just likes to have her guitar settled against her. It’s a certain kind of calming that she can’t help but need sometimes. 

When the rest of them are apparently satisfied that she isn’t going to launch into anything that would be worthy of their attention, they start to drift back to what they were doing beforehand and Barb does her best to ignore the briefly disappointed glances from some of them and the stab of it she feels in her own gut when she loses control of the room. Can’t win them all, she figures. 

She saunters over to Riff, who she’d name as her closest friend in the room if you held her at gunpoint. She pushes a stool over towards him with her foot and slings herself onto it, having to slam a heavy boot into the floor briefly, in order to keep her balance and stop herself from toppling right back onto the floor.

“I miss anythin’ good?” 

He laughs nervously for a moment, and then gives a shake of his head that shakes his beanie back a little, until he reaches a hand up to yank it back over his face. Barb’s never thought to question him on the hiding of his face and she doubts she ever will. 

“Uhh, not really. I mean,” he stumbles over the words and fiddles loosely with the drumstick he’s holding in one hand. Barb winces, internally, about how he’s still pretty anxious of offending her. She really does need to work on that, though she’d be indignant if anyone told her she wasn’t trying. It’s difficult to try and stop yourself being so snappy when it’s how you’ve been your whole life. Or, most of your life, anyway. 

“I’ve been working on a good beat. I think it’s good, anyway, and Ace said it rocked, so -” 

“Cool!” Barb’s input is exceptionally quick, because she knows he’ll ramble otherwise, but she emphasises enthusiasm in the single syllable, sits up a little to show she’s paying attention to what he’s saying. “I’d love to hear it, man.” The exaggeration is evident in her voice, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t genuinely interested. You can’t have a great rock song without the percussion, after all. She’s just a little unused to the challenges of being a generally pleasant and supportive person, but she’ll get there. She thinks. 

He seems to have perked up a little at least, which she can feel kind of grateful for. His wrist flicks, to exercise a dexterity she’s almost jealous of sometimes, to spin one of his drumsticks in his hand. Before the tip can get anywhere near the skin of any of his drums, Barb’s attention is wrested away from him. 

“Yo, Barb.” As if he’s just noticed she’s there, she catches the slow drawl of Sid’s voice from across the room, where he’s just stopped to let Chord finish up on her own. He has a hand in the air, and something bright clutched in it, that seems to be unleashing great clouds of glitter onto the floor whenever he waves it back and forth. She has half a mind to snap at him for the mess, but her mind is a little preoccupied with the possibilities of what the hot pink means. 

“The, uhh.... Popstar was in earlier. Wanted to give this to you.” 

It takes a lot of physical effort for Barb to not leap the several feet across the room it’d take to grab it out of his hand, and she barely manages to subdue her legs into just less than a power walk as she heads over, with an apologetic glance towards Riff, who shrugs and gives her a thumbs up. 

“Cool. That’s cool. Nice,” she mumbles, as she yanks it out of his grip with an unnecessary force. If anyone notices the sudden dip in her confidence, no one says anything. They’re all too busy watching her to see what it actually is, anyway. She can kind of tell they’ve been itching to find out since whenever it was delivered, and she has a brief, sudden appreciation for them waiting for her. 

It’s an envelope, sealed with a rainbow sticker, and it’s pretty thick. Barb tears open the end of it with her teeth, then spits the sliver of paper onto the floor next to the pile of glitter. The other section of the envelope follows suit, and with it comes another mess of the stuff spilling onto the floor from the opening. She looks down at the floor, and the sparkling turquoise that’s spilled onto her boots blankly for a good few moments, until her brow furrows and she turns back to what is now obviously a card.

She opens it with a thumb, smoothly, and is not prepared for the extra helping of even more glitter inside, even though in hindsight, she should really have seen that coming. From what she knows about the popstar down stairs, she’s guessing it’s probably that fucking biodegradable shit too. Figures. 

In neat, bubbly handwriting that’s in a surprisingly plain black - though it  _ does _ look like a gel pen - there’s a neat little message written, that Barb chooses to read out loud to everyone present. 

“Dear Barb - and others! 

I don’t know your names, and obviously that’s a real big problem since we’re all gonna be friends and family from now on! Which is why I’m inviting you all to a mixer party we’re hosting in this very building! Saturday night, after work, catering provided, party planned and everything totally sorted. You just need to bring yourselves! 

Everyone from every floor is invited and we’d all really appreciate it if you could make it! 

Love, Poppy.

P.S. I -” Barb cuts herself off, and clears her throat. “Department head stuff.” It’s not. She’s staring at the looping cursive line reading ‘P.S. I wrote in black, ‘cause I’m guessing it’s your favourite colour! <3’. It’s not necessarily completely true, but it’s cute. It’s abominably cute and she’s trying hard not to let her face get hot again because everyone in the room is still watching her. 

Oh, wait. Everyone in the room is still watching her. There’s another beat or two before she blinks away the brief fuzz that blanketed her brain and actually registers the contents of the invitation, to call it what it is. Her brow furrows again, mouth turning down in one corner. 

“What the fuck?” 


End file.
